CHAT: Humor, inter alia

"Raymond A. Brown" wrote:

> >Its probably a cultural thing. 8-)
>
> Probably.  It's certainly happened to me more than once.  I've written
> something that seemed to me obviously humorous and in this neck of the
> woods would generally be taken so only to find that some one on the other
> side of the pond took a very different view.  I remember when we read Greek
> comedy so many, many years ago, it was remarked how difficult it is for
> humor to travel across cultural boundaries, but how universal tragedy was.
I have a feeling, though, that individual idiosyncracies have far
greater influence than culture.  Cultural trends only provide tendencies,
not certitudes.

> But in the early hours of this morning as all was peaceful & quiet, I
> suddenly remembered an example far closer to home: Finnish.  Now that
> language does not the familiar aspirated ~ unaspirated opposition of
> Chinese & the languages of SE Asia.  It has IIRC voiceless plosives /p/,
> /t/, /k/ but only _one_ voiced plosive /d/.  But it has at least two nasals
> /n/ and /m/ and I'm fairly certain (or is it too lazy to check :) that /N/
> is also phonemic.
I think I've read somewhere, though, that [b] and [g] occur allophonicly.
FWIW.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

There's nothing particularly wrong with the
proletariat. It's the hamburgers of the
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